


we might take it home

by vastlyunknown



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 14:53:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4839620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vastlyunknown/pseuds/vastlyunknown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronan dreams of a magical place and of Adam. Or does he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	we might take it home

**Author's Note:**

> HI NEW FANDOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is exciting! My first trc fic and I'm scared shitless! I hope you like it! Excuse this foolishness, I'm still trying to figure them out! I hope you like it!  
> Thanks to Laura for listening to me, encouraging me and providing me with a title.

It’s quiet. Not eerily so, not loudly so, not anxiously so or desperately so or warningly so. It’s just quiet. Quiet like those few moments just before drifting into sleep; when everything is subdued and hazy and heavy. Quiet like the edge of dreams, fuzzy and almost unreachable. Quiet unlike Ronan, unlike Ronan’s life, unlike Ronan’s dreams or hopes. It doesn’t claw at his inside, it doesn’t crawl just under his skin, it doesn’t burn like his touch.

It isn’t desperate but it is unsettling.

Ronan looks around himself. He’s in Cabeswater, he’s sure of it. He knows the forest, sometimes it feels like he knows it better than he knows himself. Cabeswater has been his longest companion, for a while it felt more like home than The Barns or Monmouth did. It’s not a friend, something so strange and beautiful and magical and unfathomable can’t be a friend but it’s been a comfort and a gift.

Ronan knows Cabeswater like he knows Chainsaw. It’s part of himself.

He knows he’s in Cabeswater, but it’s not a cabeswater he knows though. It’s a part of the enchanted forest he’s never seen before. Not like he was never granted access to it but more like he wasn’t aware it existed.

Before now.

The trees are lush but the leaves aren’t green; they’re a vibrant orange that’s almost as brilliant and blinding as sunshine. The tree trunks are darker than the their natural brown, almost black, except for the ones that are covered in bright green moss. The scent of rain is heavy and bittersweet on his tongue but everything around him is dry. He can see ravens, dozen upon dozens of ravens peaking from behind the leaves. They look at him with the familiarity of friends. The grass under his bare foot is long and tickles his toes.

Ronan wiggles them and feels a foolish twitch of his lips.

He feels strange or rather doesn’t know what he’s feeling, not because he’s never felt like he does right now but because it’s been so long since he felt anything resembling this. He’s not happy, not really but he feels a kind of ease roll down his shoulders and shiver down his spine. The sun kisses his bare back and he keeps his head bowed, in reverence, in remembrance, in heartbreak.

He feels him before he hears or sees him. Because of course he would be here. Who else would fit this beautiful, secret and improbable place? He looks up and a smile is startled out of him as he takes Adam in.

Who else would it be but Adam?

He wakes up all at once. He hasn’t brought anything back with him, it wasn’t his intention when he finally dozed off last night, unable to fight sleep anymore. He doesn’t have to pull himself awake, there’s no moment, no space between seeing dream Adam, shirtless and welcoming, and opening his eyes to find himself in his room. He frowns as he smells the heavy scent of roses. He looks down at himself and finds his chest covered in black petals. He stirs and feels even more petals fall from his chest, his neck and his face. He looks blearily around himself and realises his wreck of a room is covered in black rose petals. The sight should unsettles him, distantly he thinks someone normal would be freaked out. Ronan, however, wants to bury his nose in the layers of darkness and get high on the smell of it. Chainsaw has made a nest of petals on top of a pile of phone books that aren’t really phone books.

“Kerrah,” she crows and settles firmly on top of her newly made bed.

For some inexplicable reason, Ronan finds himself laughing.

*

It’s a Saturday and when he emerges from his petal covered room, he runs straight into a cloud of wool and mismatched colours.

“Maggot,” he cocks an eyebrow in her direction.

“Why is it so cold?” she grumbles while offering him one of the Styrofoam cups she’s holding. “It’s cocoa and don’t give me that look. We could all use some warmth in this misery.”

He takes the cup from her and steps around her to get to the kitchen/bathroom.

“You’re welcome,” she mutters and that pulls a small smile out of him. Once inside the kitchen/bathroom, he takes a sip of his gift and sighs at the sweet taste of it. Any and all remaining tension in his shoulders loosens and it’s feeling almost light that he steps into the shower.

He finds her sitting on the edge of his unmade bed, one hand roaming through the dark petals and something like possessiveness blurs his vision. He must have made a noise because she looks up and then averts her eyes almost sheepish. It surprises him, Sargent has never looked away from him, never cowered from his glares. It’s almost like she understood what the mess in his rooms means to him, like she knows she overstepped her boundaries.

He spis loudly at his cocoa, a small offering. A silent permission. She looks back at him and something passes between them, something akin to understanding. She squares her shoulders and brings her own cup to her lips and takes a sip while looking at Ronan through her eyelashes. There’s something knowing and almost teasing in the glint of her dark eyes now. Ronan finds himself rolling his own shoulders to get rid of the weight of her stare.

“I need to change,” he grunts.

“I’ll leave you to it,” she whispers getting up from the bed, letting a couple of petals flutter to the floor. Ronan watches them fall and feels strangely comforted by the idea that they’re staying with him.

Blue deliberately bumps their shoulders as she passes him on the threshold. She leans ever so slightly into him and Ronan does the same. It doesn’t last long and Ronan understands perfectly well what it means, instead of rejecting it, he accepts it and lets himself, lets both of them have this.

When he emerges from his room, Blue has taken off her winter gear and she’s sitting in the middle of Gansey’s bed. The hand not holding her cocoa is running over Gansey’s pillows. There’s a strange wistfulness to her face. Perhaps she was hoping to find rose petals of her own.  Perhaps she has strange dreams about a shirtless Gansey in a magical place of her own. Perhaps she doesn’t and perhaps that’s why she looks broken. Ronan falls in the bed next to her, leans his forehead on her knee and she moves her fingers from the pillow to the shape of Ronan’s eyebrows.

He doesn’t know how long they stay like that but he lets her talk about her stupid History teacher and how sometimes she imagines them, her raven boys, sitting in class with her and calling him out on his bullshit. He almost laughs at the picture she presents him, thinking that Adam could probably out-teach him. He tells her so, he doesn’t know why he does but he doesn’t feel bad for it. He feels almost relief to have given this small, precious part of himself away.

“Gansey would be a nightmare,” she says softly and this time he lets himself laugh.

“Where’s he, anyway?” he asks when they fall quiet.

“Found this earlier,” she says picking up a note from behind her. She holds it up for Ronan and he tilts his head just enough to read it.

_Good morning,_

_Adam and I will be spending the day at Aliongby library working on the Lit paper. The same Lit paper that counts for 30% of our final grade and that is due next week. The one you haven’t started yet. Please, feel free to join us but only if you actually intend to work. Otherwise, stay home and try not to destroy anything while we’re away._

_Gansey._

“Wanna destroy Dick’s boat shoes,” he smirks up at Blue and her eyes widen in something like delight.

It’s a very satisfying and surprisingly fun day. Ronan is very good at destroying things and Blue is very good at making it look like nothing happened. Later when Gansey finds that half of his shoes are missing and watches Chainsaw playing with a string that’s awfully familiar, he only sighs loudly grabbing his phone and heading for the kitchen/bathroom.

Ronan’s eyes fall on Adam. Or rather, he finally allows himself the luxury to look at him. He’s sitting in the middle of the Henrietta model, his hair windblown and his cheeks pink from the cold He’s shaking his head, looking down at his hands but there’s a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. He looks up before Ronan can look away, almost like he felt his gaze on him, almost like he wanted to catch him looking.

His shoulders drop and he tilts his head sideways. Ronan feels the weight of that gaze caving his very lungs. He wants to look away, wants to crawl under his petal bed, wants to breathe but he’d sooner stop existing than tear his gaze away when Adam looks like he’s expecting something from him.

“Take me home?”

Ronan grabs his jacket and car keys and waits for Adam in the BMW, feeling both loose and strung too tight.

*

He’s that quiet place again. It’s the same feeling and the same clearing of vibrant trees. He’s shirtless and barefoot once again but he feels warm. Adam is waiting for him, sitting by a tree, a book in his lap. The sun is playing a symphony of light on his hair and Ronan takes a deep breath before sitting down himself, beauty knocking him off his feet so swiftly, he loses his breath.

Which is fucking stupid since he’s dreaming and he doesn’t really need to breathe but everything about his place seems and feels real. From the breath that’s stolen out of him to the whisper of wind playing with Adam’s hair.

It seems that it’s what Adam was waiting for because as soon as Ronan settles down on the opposite side of the clearing, he opens the book and starts to read. Ronan can’t catch the words, it seems like they’re coming from too far away and spoken in a language Ronan’s never heard before. He hears Adam voice though. Hears the deep twang of his Henrietta accent, the warmth of his elongated vowels and the comfortable roll of his consonants. Ronan feels  the words whisper against his skin like a secret, leaving goosebumps in their wake. He sighs and leans his head against the tree. Closing his eyes he lets Adam’s voice wash over him, quiet like magic.

He wakes up all at once. He’s alone in Adam’s room, the church bells echoing loudly in the room. His eyes are looking at vine. The small room is covered in bright green vine, it’s all over the walls, the floors, Adam’s desk and crawling over the small bathroom. Ronan is blanketed in them. He’s afraid he won’t he able to move but when he tries moving his arm, they’re as light and soft as the petals he woke up to yesterday morning.  As she pushes them aside, they crumple, sifting through his fingers like sand.  He swipes his arms over Adam’s bed and the same thing happens.

He spends the next hour making vine disappear and cleaning after it, feeling half mortified and half awed. When he leaves St Agnes, it looks like he wasn’t there at all - the essay Adam dragged out of him last night safely tucked away in his bag - except for the heavy scent of forest he leaves behind. He prays Adam didn’t wake up to his secret shame.

*

He goes to Cabeswater and brings Matthew with him. They spend time with their mother, seasons changing faster than they can notice and Matthew’s laughter echoing around them. He drinks in the sight of their blond curls, the crinkles by his mother’s eyes and weight of his brother’s hand in his. Breathes in and out, searching for that heady scent of rain but unable to find it. He wants to go look for that special dream place - the dream place in the dream place - but it feels wrong somehow. He’s afraid to break the illusion, he’s scared he won’t be able to dream of it again. Scared he’ll lose that Adam before he can properly reach him.

He lays his head in his mother’s lap and breathes in and out.

*

The next time he dreams of that place, he opens his eyes to find Adam’s head on his lap. Something twists inside him, his heart clogging his airways.

“Sometimes,” Adam’s voice startles him. It’s soft but it resonates through Ronan, rattles his bones. It lacks the usual cautiousness Adam carries himself with. Ronan looks down and finds Adam’s eyes closed, his features soft and unassuming but he swallows hard when Ronan stares at him (like he can feel the weight of it) and there’s a flush to his cheeks that makes Ronan’s chest tighten. “Sometimes, I want to touch you so much, my fingers tingle.”

“What?” Ronan rasps.

Adam lifts one of his hands and slowly wiggles his fingers. “They tingle. It’s almost like a sting but softer, deeper.”

Ronan reaches out, drags his index fingers on each fingertip. Adam shudders out a breath. He opens his eyes and they seem, to Ronan, bottomless and colorless.

“You feel it?”

Ronan doesn’t know how to answer him. He doesn’t feel tingles but he aches for Adam’s touch just the same. Longs for it, awake or in his dreams. He presses a hand to Adam’s heart, feels the wild tempo under his palms and wants to hiss, wants crawl under Adam’s skin, settle close to the beat of it and let the rhythm sooth him to sleep.

“Yes,” Ronan breathes for lack of a better fitting answer because no matter what, it’ll always be yes for Adam. “You can,” he keeps his eyes on Adam and feels every beat of his heart in his blood. He feels the warmth of his skin sear his very soul.

“I’d rather cover you in petals and cradle you in vine.”

“I’d rather have you,” Ronan counters.

“I’d rather keep you safe,” Adam whispers, slotting fingers with Ronan’s over his own heart.

*

Adam, real Adam, gritty and sarcastic and hard and glorious Adam, doesn’t look at him for the next week. Ronan feels bereft and relieved. He keeps dreaming though. Soft dreams that have him waking up laughing. Hot and wet and breathless dreams that have him rutting against his mattress and wiping away traces of shame from his chest. Quiet dreams that make the real world seem too fucking loud. Alone faced with a reality where Adam seems to be running away from himself, Ronan longs for nights and an Adam that’s not afraid of being his.

Ronan’s got no way of knowing if dream Adam shares the same desire as Ronan’s Adam. He doesn’t know where this dream place came from but something about the delicacy of it makes him believe his own mind didn’t come up with it. He feels like he’s been invited to it.

Some days, he even feels like it was created just for him.

*

The first thing Ronan brings back from the dream place is a scarf. It’s a dark, woolen, gray and thick thing.

It’s obnoxiously big and imperfect. A bit like Ronan himself.

Adam drapes it over his shoulders and uses it to pull him into a scolding kiss.

“You’re a rich dream thief and you never have proper winter attire,” he whispers against Ronan’s lips.

“Fuck off,” Ronan bites and Adam laughs, head tilted back, exposing his neck. Ronan sucks a mark on it and Adam’s laughter turns into a delighted gasp.  

When he wakes up, the scarf is draped over his bed. He drops it by St Agnes before Sunday Mass. The next day when he catches Adam wearing it over his Aliongby uniform, he goes to buy himself proper winter gear. He doesn’t go as far as buying a gray scarf but the blue one he gets is close enough to gray to pull a smile out of Adam the next morning.

*

“You think Cabeswater is trying to tell you something?” Noah says one afternoon. Ronan is sitting on Gansey’s bed watching Gansey, Blue and Adam pouring over one of the expansive maps Gansey possesses.

“Cabeswater doesn’t speak to me in riddles,” Ronan says tracing the back of Adam’s hairline. Blue gave him a haircut last week, freeing most of his neck and it makes Ronan hungry. So hungry.

“That’s because Cabeswater loves you. You’re totally Cabeswater’s fave,” Noah says. The smudgy boy looks cheerfully clear and solid today. It makes Ronan want to reach out to touch him, tether him to them.

He doesn’t. Instead, he smirks. “A safe choice.”

Noah laughs. “But seriously. These dreams,” Ronan stiffens besides him and Noah waves him off. “You’ve been in an awfully good mood. I saw you smile twice this week. I had to look into it.”

He doesn’t even look sorry, the little shit. “Stay the fuck out of my head.”

“I wasn’t inside your head, though,” Noah replies, shooting him a loaded look. “Maybe you’re not Cabeswater’s favourite after all.”

He disappear only to reappear by Adam’s side. He leans his shoulder against Adam’s and Adam offers him a smile.

Ronan’s heart beats so loudly, he’s trembling with it.

*

Adam comes back to him. Slowly, by increments, with furtive glances, stolen touches, irrepressible smiles, biting sarcasm and fond glares. He asks to go to the barnes with Ronan and in return Ronan sleeps on the floor of his shitty apartment. Sometimes he thinks St Agnes only made Adam seem bigger. Surrounded by such smallness and shabbiness, Adam looks like a fallen king. He doesn’t belong there and he doesn’t fit Henrietta. And yet, he doesn’t seem completely in his place at The Barns either. Ronan aches to have him there, to be there with Adam all the time. He revels in watching Adam’s eyes roam the property with poorly disguised longing and bitterness.

But Adam doesn’t belong in The Barnes, amongst Niall’s dream things and Ronan’s broken memories. Adam belongs to Adam. Lonesome Adam can’t let himself belong. Not yet.

It’s okay. Ronan doesn’t belong to a place either.

*

“Do you ever miss being touched?” Adam asks one night. They’re studying in Ronan’s room in Monmouth. Well Adam is reading out loud to Ronan while Ronan doodles dirty sketches on Adam’s notes.

Sometimes, he still finds petals in corners of his room, or under a pile of his clothes or in Chainsaw’s cage. He got rid off most of them that day after he woke up to them but the scent still lingers, as heady as the petals were dark. Now, he watches as Adam tugs one from under a book on his desk, feels heat pulsing through him like lightning. Adam pulls the petal closer and tilts his head, inspecting it. A sudden flush steals across the bridge of his nose and his neck. He looks back at Ronan who lays motionless on his bed.

“I don’t miss it,” Ronan says because he can’t miss what he never had from the person he needed it the most. He still aches. He still wants.

He watches as Adam slides the petal between the pages of his book and resumes reading. Adam keeps on reading, long after the assigned reading has been read, keeps reading until his voice breaks. Reads until his eyelids starts falling heavily over his tired eyes. Reads until Ronan pulls him to bed and they fall asleep on opposite sides of the bed, hands close to touching.

That night, in the dream, Ronan sleeps. He sleeps with Adam draped over him, his hair tickling his nose and his breath fanning over Ronan’s neck and collarbones. He sleeps with Adam’s fingers clutching his own. He sleeps and love booms inside of him like a storm, leaving him awake and alive and awed.

He wakes up to Adam blinking slowly and resolutely at him and with their fingers interlocked. He feels Adam squeezing his fingers and in that moment he’s not sure where dreams start and where they end. It scares him because he’s always been good at toying the edge.

“I worry,” Adam says, eyes wide and scared. “I always have.”

“I know,” Ronan says, undone and unsure.

“You don’t know how much I worry about you.”

Ronan’s useless piece of shit heart wails in misery. If there’s one thing he doesn’t want to be for Adam, it’s a source of worry.

“Nothing to worry about, Parrish,” he says.

Adam laughs harshly, swallowing loudly, eyes roving over Ronan’s face, eventually settling on his lips. He untangles their fingers and brings his hands to Ronan’s face. Gingerly, like Ronan was made of crystal, too fragile and beautiful to be touched, Adam traces his features. From his thick, unforgiving eyebrows to the sharp cut of his cheekbones and finally tracing his dark red lips. A fever has taken hold of Ronan and he wants to never sleep, never dream again. If this is reality, Ronan doesn’t care for dreams.

“Sometimes, I think you’re the only thing worth worrying about,” Adam says, cupping the of his face. Ronan exhales harshly, grasping Adam’s wrist and bending his head, burrowing close to his chest.

He feels lips brushing his skin and Ronan snaps his head back. He looks into Adam’s eyes, really looks at him this time.

Nothing has changed, not really, there’s still a storm brewing in there, something mystic and unfathomable that Adam is growing better at hiding and controlling. That’s how Adam has always looked at him, sometimes with anger, sometimes with reluctant fondness, often with awe and bitterness. Sometimes, he looked at Ronan like maybe they could belong, could be lonesome and unknowable together. More and more lately, he’s looked at Ronan with understanding.

Things haven’t suddenly changed, it’s been coming for a long time. They’ve been growing together, changing together and they’ve allowed each other more freedom with their person. It hasn’t changed and yet this is the first time Ronan sees it clearly.

“Let me carry some of it,” Ronan all but begs. The struggle is clear in Adam but clearer even is the relief and the longing. “You can touch me.”

Adam’s breath comes out sharply but he leans in, like a magician, like a dream, like Adam, takes Ronan and let himself fall into Ronan.

Adam kisses like he’s been hungry for it all his life. He touches Ronan like he’s been starved of touch and like Ronan’s skin is the only one who satiates him. Like Ronan is whole and eno He devours and wrecks Ronan and puts him back together with a clever tongue and rough fingers. He sleeps wrapped around Ronan, clutching him in sleep and in dreams like he’s scared Ronan won’t be there when he wakes up.  He lets Ronan in, inch by delicious inch.

And Ronan finally understands. The dream place, the part of Cabeswater he was allowed in; it was his but not in the way he expected. It was his from Adam. It was theirs.  

 

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE don't forget to review, I would appreciate it a lot. You can find me on tumblr as hrhpatroclus.


End file.
